Working directly with Yuvraj Raulji
One senior technology partner, working directly with you. The person you speak to is the person doing the work. No account manager between you and the decision, no bench behind it, and no proposal for a project you do not need.
Direct answer
Directly, and with one person rather than a team. Engagements take three shapes: technology partner, where the deliverable is a decision and the reasoning behind it; project partner, a defined piece of work with a scope and an end; and ongoing technology partner, where a platform needs someone to own it. Every engagement starts with the same conversation about what is actually in front of you, and that conversation sometimes ends with a recommendation that no project is needed.
Worth a conversation when
- A platform or architecture decision that is hard to reverse
- A commerce problem that is costing revenue and nobody has diagnosed it
- Technical leadership on a build where the decision matters
- A second opinion on a proposal you cannot independently evaluate
- A defined piece of work that needs to be done properly the first time
- A platform that needs someone to own it technically
Before you ask
There is no bench behind this, no account manager to brief, and no delivery team to manage. If you need four people starting Monday, a managed delivery operation, or a supplier who will execute a specification without questioning it, this is the wrong place, and it is better to establish that before a call.
Direct access, always
You work with the person doing the work. There is no account manager between you and the person responsible for the outcome.
Independent technology advice
No platform partnership, no reseller margin. Technology recommendations based on what the business needs, not on what the supplier is positioned to deliver.
One point of accountability
One person responsible. Not a team to brief, not a rotation between phases, not a handoff when the scope changes.
How to work together
Which one fits comes out of the first conversation. Choosing it in advance is how people end up buying a build when they needed a decision.
Technology Partner
The deliverable is a decision, with the reasoning attached.
Platform selection, architecture review, technical due diligence, or a second opinion on a proposal. Typically a short engagement producing a written account of the current state, the decisions that need making with a recommendation on each, and an order of work. On an inherited platform the current-state document is often the part with the most immediate value, because it is the first time the whole system has been described in one place.
Fits when
- The decision is expensive and hard to reverse
- Nobody internally has made this call before
- You are holding a proposal you cannot evaluate
- A platform was inherited and nobody can explain it
Project Partner
A scope, a shape and an end.
A migration, a performance programme, an integration boundary, an upgrade, a build. Scoped after the problem is understood rather than before, because a scope written against a symptom is how projects end up delivering the wrong thing accurately. The service pages under each platform describe what these actually look like.
Fits when
- The decision is already made and the work is real
- Something has to be delivered by a date
- The internal team can hold it afterwards
- You want the scope argued with before it is agreed
Ongoing Technology Partner
Somebody owns the platform.
Patch cadence, release discipline, monitoring, and the technical ownership most platforms are missing rather than the ticket queue most retainers sell. The stated goal is to hand it back: documentation and enough transfer that the internal team can hold it. An arrangement that makes itself indispensable is a commercial arrangement rather than a technical one.
Fits when
- Deploys depend on one person being available
- Updates are deferred because the last one broke something
- Failures are reported by customers first
- There is no in-house owner and no plan to hire one
How it starts
The most useful first message describes a symptom rather than requesting a technology, because the technology is the last decision rather than the first.
Describe the problem
Not the project. What is actually in front of you, what it is costing, and what has already been tried. The most useful first message is the one that describes a symptom rather than requests a technology.
A 30-minute conversation
The constraint you are hitting, the decision behind it, and what would have to be true for each option to be right. Free, and it occasionally ends with a recommendation to do nothing.
A shape, in writing
Which of the three models fits, what it would cover, and what it deliberately excludes. If none of them fits, that is said rather than worked around.
The work, with the reasoning visible
Decisions documented as they are made, so the thinking survives the engagement. This is what makes it possible to hand the platform back rather than leaving a dependency behind.
What you get
Direct access
You work with the person doing the work, on every call. There is no account manager and nobody else to brief on a decision.
Senior judgement
Nine years from the first Magento role in June 2016: multi-store catalogues, B2B approval workflows, headless commerce and AI systems. The decisions that matter are made by the person who has made them before.
One point of accountability
One person responsible for the outcome. Not a team, not a rotation between phases, and not a handoff when the scope changes.
Independent
No platform partnership, no reseller margin and no incentive to recommend one technology over another. A recommendation against a project is always available.
Platforms
Nine technologies with a real delivery record behind them. Anything outside this list would mean charging you to learn it, which is said in the first conversation rather than after.
Hire Magento expertise
On Magento this most often starts as a performance problem or an upgrade nobody wants to run, and turns out to be a data model or an extension decision underneath.
Hire Shopify expertise
On Shopify this usually begins as a speed or conversion problem and resolves into an app list nobody has owned and a theme nobody wants to touch.
Hire WooCommerce expertise
On WooCommerce this usually starts with a slow checkout or a scary update, and the answer is a plugin decision rather than a rebuild.
Hire WordPress expertise
On WordPress this usually arrives as a rebuild request and turns out to be a content model, a plugin cull and a caching fix, at a fraction of the cost.
Hire headless commerce expertise
On headless this usually starts as a performance brief and resolves into a question about whether your release cycle is genuinely the bottleneck.
Hire AI commerce expertise
This usually starts as an AI request and becomes a data quality question, because a model amplifies the catalogue it is given.
Hire AI search expertise
This usually starts as a search complaint and turns into a catalogue attribute problem, which is a merchandising decision rather than a search one.
Hire AI automation expertise
This usually starts as an automation request and begins with a process redesign, because the first version worth trusting is deterministic rather than generative.
Hire Next.js expertise
On Next.js this usually starts as a rebuild request and turns into a rendering and caching conversation, because that is what actually decides the result.
Hire Mixpanel expertise
On Mixpanel this usually starts as a reporting request and becomes an audit, because the charts are only as honest as the events behind them.
Hire digital transformation expertise
This usually arrives as a replatform and becomes a phasing question, because trading has to continue while the system changes underneath it.
Questions
- When does a business need a technology partner rather than an agency?
- When the problem involves judgement rather than just execution. An agency is the right choice for a defined scope of work that needs a team. A technology partner is the right choice when you need someone to help decide what to build, whether to build it, and how to sequence the work. The distinction matters most on platform decisions, architecture choices, and situations where the specification itself might be wrong.
- Can you do the technical work directly, not just advise?
- Yes, and the work often involves hands-on technical execution. What does not happen is being placed into a team as a resource against a specification somebody else wrote, because the value here is in arguing with the specification before it is built. If you need hands on a defined backlog without that argument, an agency or a contractor is a better fit.
- Do you work with agencies, or only direct?
- Both. Agencies engage this most often for a second opinion on an architecture, a platform decision they want checked independently, or a specialist piece of Magento work. The arrangement is the same either way, and the advice does not change because of who is paying for it.
- What does it cost?
- It depends on which of the three shapes fits and what the work turns out to be, so a number before the first conversation would be a guess. What can be said is that advisory engagements are short and priced as advice rather than as a deposit against a build, which is what makes a recommendation against the build possible.
- How quickly can you start?
- Ask, because it depends on what is already running. What is worth knowing is that the first conversation does not wait on availability: if the timing does not work, it is better to say so after understanding the problem than to hold the slot and find out later it was the wrong problem.
- Do you build the whole thing, or advise and hand over?
- Either, and the honest answer depends on your team. Where there is an internal team, the better outcome is usually architecture and the difficult parts, with the rest handed over. Where there is not, a defined build makes more sense. The one arrangement deliberately avoided is becoming a permanent dependency nobody planned for.
- What if the platform I am on is not one you work with?
- Then that is said in the first conversation. The platforms on this site are the ones with a real delivery record behind them, and taking work on a platform outside that would mean charging you to learn it.
Next step
Send the symptom, what it is costing and what has already been tried. Thirty minutes is usually enough to name the decision underneath it, and that conversation occasionally ends with me saying you do not need the project.
Not ready to commit to an engagement? Start with a technical audit, which is fixed in scope and ends with a document rather than a proposal.
Working at an agency rather than buying for your own business? There is a separate page for that, because the arrangement and the commitments are different.